Boosting students’ engagement and writing skills through team games tournament in primary classrooms

Abstract

This study, grounded in the principles of cooperative learning and social constructivism, examines the pedagogical potential of the Teams Games Tournament (TGT) model in promoting student engagement and improving writing proficiency. In Indonesian primary classrooms, writing instruction is often teacher-centered, with limited opportunities for active learning, collaboration, and authentic expression. Since writing is a cognitively demanding skill, it requires more dynamic and student-centered approaches to foster motivation, critical thinking, and communicative competence. To address this gap, the study investigates the effectiveness of the TGT model in enhancing sixth-grade students’ engagement and explanatory writing performance. A quasi-experimental design was employed, involving 58 students from a public primary school in Indonesia, who were assigned to experimental and control groups. Data were collected through explanatory writing assessments, classroom observation checklists, and self-report engagement questionnaires. The quantitative analysis, utilizing both descriptive and inferential statistics, revealed that students in the experimental group exposed to the TGT model exhibited significantly higher levels of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. Furthermore, they demonstrated substantial improvements in writing quality, including content, organization, and language use, compared to their peers in the control group. The collaborative, game-based structure of the TGT model fostered a supportive, competitive, and motivating learning environment. These findings suggest that the TGT model can be an effective instructional strategy to enhance both student engagement and writing proficiency in primary education, particularly in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL).